The Railroad
Commissioners had issued the coveted certificate for the Wachusett
route, and the rest was easy. Irons was therefore grateful to the
widow, and he at length agreed to consult his associates, and he did
not deny Mrs. Sampson's observation that it was as much for the benefit
of the corporation as of herself that money passing between them should
be covered by some such disguise as that of this stock operation.
The widow had returned home not over sanguine, and her astonishment was
scarcely less than her pleasure when, on Wednesday afternoon, she
received a note from Irons, assenting to her proposition with the
modification that the purchasing figure should be three dollars instead
of four. It was a fact as far beyond the limits of the widow's
knowledge as it was beyond that of his colleagues, that Irons meant to
make this transaction the means of increasing a revenge which he
already had in train. That gentleman had never forgiven Fenton for
burning the order for railroad bonds, and when accident threw the
Princeton Platinum stock into his hands he determined to make it the
means of the artist's discomfiture. It was only the day after he had
offered Fenton his four thousand shares that Mrs. Sampson appeared with
her offer of three thousand more. He had no doubt of his ability to
entrap Fenton into buying, the one weak spot in his plan being the
fact, of which he was in complete ignorance, that Fenton already held
stock and had nothing whatever with which to buy more.
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